


All Tai'd Up

by Kiiratam



Series: A Brush With Beryl [3]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Background Relationships, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Former Relationships, Implied/Referenced Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:34:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25892941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kiiratam/pseuds/Kiiratam
Summary: After her first training session, Beryl goes out to dinner with her mother and Taiyang.Takes place between Volumes 5 and 6. Not canon-compliant, but not not canon-compliant, so far as we know. (My BMBLB fic index)
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Raven Branwen/Taiyang Xiao Long
Series: A Brush With Beryl [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878958
Comments: 17
Kudos: 34





	All Tai'd Up

Beryl stared up at the sky. Again, because Taiyang had taken her to the ground. They'd been at this for hours, and she didn't know how many times she'd eaten dirt.

  
With a groan, she rolled back to her feet, and got ready to - probably go down again, if she was being honest. At least it was a nice autumn day. And the ground of her backyard was reasonably soft. Zwei barked encouragingly.

  
But Taiyang dropped his guard. "We should probably call it for the day."

  
"What?" Beryl lowered her fists a bit. "I thought I was doing well."

  
He nodded. "You are. A few bad habits we need to work on, but we'll get to those later. This was your first practice in how long?"

  
"Um. Months?" _Nearly a year._ "I wanted to spar with Yang, but -" _She never asked me._ "- the timing never worked out." Beryl settled out of her stance, and stretched her arm across her chest.

  
"It never does. Speaking of, our next session - " Taiyang patted his pockets, then frowned. "Sorry, I misplaced my scroll last week, and I haven't been able to find it. Same time next week?"

  
"I was... kind of hoping we could do this more often." Her mom had certainly enjoyed it, bringing Taiyang lemonade, and grinning at Beryl when he was looking away - even if she had gone inside when the actual sparring started.

  
And once a week barely seemed enough to knock the rust off, and _maybe_ keep it off. It certainly wasn't going to help Beryl get better. And she didn't know how long she could really afford to spend training, when everything was getting worse in the world, with the attempted bombing of Haven Academy, and Atlas recalling all of their troops, and -

  
Before she could stress herself out, Beryl asked, "Is it about your time? Because I have some lien saved-"

  
"No, no, it's not that." Taiyang grinned. "Though if you want to do a veggie exchange, I won't say no. How do you two feel about sunflower seeds?"

  
"We'd love some!" Her mother spoke from right behind her, and Beryl jumped.

  
"Mom! How long have you been standing there?"

  
Her mother put a finger to her lips, thinking. "Two falls?"

  
Beryl sighed. She _really_ needed to work on her situational awareness, because she hadn't noticed her mother at _all_.

  
"Do we want to work out exchange rates over dinner?" Her mom offered both of them water bottles. "I was thinking pizza."

  
Taking a drink and pulling out her scroll, Beryl checked the time. It was a little early, but it was a bit of a walk to Virgil's Tables. And now that she was thinking about it, she was really hungry. And they didn't have much in the pantry; they were going to do a grocery run tomorrow. "Sounds good to me." She put her scroll away, and held out her hand to Zwei, who threw her a towel.

  
Taiyang wiped his brow with a towel. "Uh, I've got leftovers calling my name back home."

  
Her mom smiled. "It would be my treat."

  
After a few moments of consideration, he smiled. "One more day isn't going to hurt them."

  
Beryl grinned into her towel. Yang had mentioned that her dad had a weakness for free food, and Beryl had tried to work that tidbit into conversations with her mom. It looked like it had worked. She finished drying the sweat off, and said, "I'm going to go change my shirt." She indicated the dirt stains. "Zwei, towels?"

  
He wuffed, and caught the sweaty towel Taiyang threw to him. Wagging his entire back half, he followed her back towards the house.

* * *

  
By the time they'd made it to Virgil's Tables, the conversation was going well. Her mother and Taiyang were comparing garden outputs - with all the requisite diversions into weather, and soil, and nutrition - and her mother was happily sharing recipes for an endless abundance of zucchinis. They were chattering away so happily, in fact, that Beryl had to secure a table for everyone. Zwei was no help, because he just curled up at Tai's feet and went to sleep. After a few failed attempts to suggest that _maybe_ they should go up and place an order, Beryl gave up and went to the counter herself.

  
A messy mop of fiery red hair, attached to a girl her own age, greeted her. "Hi, Beryl!"

  
"Hi, Lavinia. How's business?"

  
"Pretty good. Lots of people came in for lunch, but you're here before the dinner rush. The 'rents are in back, preparing. How's the hair stuff?"

  
Beryl shrugged. "I start classes again in the spring."

  
"Well, um, if you need someone to practice on -" Lavinia blew a strand of hair out of her face, and grinned. "- I've still got plenty."

  
She did. It was just kind of a pain to work with, even if the end results did look stunning. They just only lasted until Lavinia shook her head vigorously.

  
"Did you ever get a chance to practice on Yang when she was here?"

  
"I forgot to ask."

  
Lavinia squeezed her mouth tightly shut, trying not to laugh. She knew Beryl too well to fall for that. "No, you didn't. Wimped out, huh?"

  
"Yup."

  
"Well, I'm sure she'll be back. So, um." Lowering her voice, Lavinia leaned forward a bit. "Is your mom going for Mr. Xiao Long?" Her eyes glanced over Beryl's shoulder at their table.

  
"Maybe?" Beryl shrugged, not really wanting to feed too much into the Patch gossip machine. 

  
"Because there's a rumor going around that someone saw a woman out at his place. Black hair, so I know it wasn't your mom."

  
It wasn't easy, but Beryl managed to keep from wincing, and touching... well, any of the numerous places Raven had landed good hits on her. She tried to look slightly concerned. "Huh."

  
"I just thought you'd like to know." Lavinia straightened back up, and into customer mode. "What did you want tonight?"

  
Having received zero actual indication of what everyone else wanted, Beryl ordered a meat-lover's pizza, because that's what she was craving. Her mind helpfully replayed some comments Yang had made about the irony of Beryl's love for sausage.

  
Lavinia passed her a few bottles of pop, and with a smile that clearly said, 'talk later?', started helping the next customer.

  
The table she came back to had more people than the one she'd left. Beryl put on a smile for the newcomers. "Um, hi?" She handed out drinks, and sat down in the chair next to her mother.

  
Taiyang smiled, and introduced the newcomers. "Beryl, this is Helena," he motioned at the older woman, with short gray hair that almost seemed to have a metallic sheen, "And Irida, her grand-daughter." She looked about Beryl's age, but she still had the same gray hair. Maybe a little darker, and worn in a braid. "And that's Aliki up in line, Helena's daughter." It took a second for Beryl to spot her, because she didn't have the (apparent) family hair. Russet, held back in a spiked updo.

  
Helena smiled at Beryl, then turned back to Beryl's mother. "You were talking about zucchini pasta."

  
"Yes! You see -"

  
Beryl lifted her gaze to the ceiling, whining at the gods that she'd done nothing to deserve this. It was probably true.

  
"Soooo-" Irida shifted into the chair on her other side. "-got any conversational topics that don't concern zucchini?"

  
"Oh thank the gods, yes." Beryl looked at her salvation. "Are you new to Patch? I haven't seen you before."

  
"I'm from the city. Mom's got a cabin here, when she gets burned out on lawyering. Local?"

  
"All my life. It's quiet." Beryl paused. "Unless it's range day at Signal."

  
Irida _tched_ her tongue. "Tell me about it. I heard some of Beacon's from downtown."

  
And lingering on the Academies wasn't going to lead anywhere good, considering the news of the last few days, so Beryl changed the subject. "What do you do downtown?"

  
"Did, but help Nana with her business. She runs a dress shop. I did deliveries, jetted around on sewing emergencies, helped with the fine stitching. Pretty normal stuff."

  
Beryl shook her head. "Normal for you. I sewed my pant leg shut when I tried to put a patch on."

  
"Yeeeeeah, that'll happen. At least you didn't do it with the pants on. Seen _that_."

  
"Ouch."

  
"Me and the paramedics had a good laugh about it later. Mostly about how bad their stitches were, and how they _kept going_."

  
"No!"

  
"Like, blood everywhere, and they only stopped because they dropped the needle."

  
Helena cleared her throat. "Iri, table talk."

  
"Sorry, Nana." Irida waited for the endless zucchini discussion to resume, and asked Beryl, "What do you do?"

  
"Hair-dressing. I've still got a couple of classes left to take, though."

  
"Hey, we find ourselves a flower arranger, and we've got a whole bridal shop."

  
"Yeah." Beryl sighed. "Not that anyone's celebrating much."

  
Irida reached out to touch her shoulder. "Hey, the latest news isn't bad. We were ready, and we stopped it."

  
Beryl felt a smile spreading. "We, huh? I'm not sure I was out of bed yet."

  
Rolling her eyes, Irida gave her a playful shove. "You know what I mean."

  
"Yeah." _We're all in this together._ "What was _your_ contribution to the war effort?" She asked, with a grin.

  
And Irida paused for a second, thinking, and started to flush. "Also sleeping? Yup, just sleeping!" She'd lowered her eyes to the table.

  
"Uh huh." With her Beacon friends, this would have been a golden opportunity to tease them mercilessly, see how much they could get away with while their parents were right there. But Beryl didn't know Irida that well, whether she enjoyed all the flirting stuff, or whether she was embarrassed about what Beryl _thought_ she was embarrassed about -

  
Aliki returned to the table, setting a drink down in front of her daughter. She offered her hand to Beryl, and Taiyang broke off listening to zucchini discussion long enough to make the introductions. Aliki got herself settled, and asked about zucchini bread. Which had been covered on the way over here, so _of course_ Beryl's mom had to go over it again-

  
Beryl took a long swig of her pop. Irida did the same, both of them clearly trying to drown their sorrows in sugar. It made Beryl feel a little better, at least. 

  
But as they lowered their bottles -

  
Beryl tried not to stare. She failed, utterly. And at that point, she figured she may as well ask, even if her mouth was ahead of her, asking, "Is your hair _iridescent_?"

  
"Um. Yes?" Irida pulled her braid around to the front, and waggled it back and forth under the light. It shifted, opening up from dark gray into a gleaming rainbow of hues.

  
It was too much. There were too many possibilities, and all of them looked _so cool_ in Beryl's head, dancing around, waiting to be brushed and twisted into existence.

  
"That's awesome!" Beryl grinned. "Like, I am literally in awe, awesome, I'm not just saying that. Have you ever done anything fancy with your hair?"

  
"Uh, not really? Just braids. I never really had an occasion."

  
"I will **find** occasions." Beryl realized she might be coming on too strong, and took a breath. "I mean, I'd love to just do some experiments with your hair sometime."

  
Irida shrugged, and now that Beryl knew to look for it, she could see the little shimmers of color in Irida's hair. "Sure, I guess? Not like there's much to do on Patch."

  
"We've got a lot of good trails. And the beach is nice. Not much for shopping or fancy dress, I admit."

  
"Yeah, I wanted to run some of the trails, but the Grimm advisory has been really high lately and-" Irida glanced in her mother's direction.

  
"Oh. Um. I've actually been doing a lot of running lately, trying to get back in shape. And I went to Signal, and I just started combat training again and-" Beryl finished lamely, "So if you want a running buddy. Yeah." She gestured at herself.

  
Irida laughed. "You're very helpful!"

  
Beryl found herself smiling back, even if she was getting a little warm from the teasing. Irida had a nice laugh, almost shimmery. Like bells. "So, um, what trails were you looking at?"

* * *

  
Mr. Virgil had brought the pizzas and salads (and a food bowl for Zwei), and everyone had dug in. Thankfully, the presence of different food seemed to have finally broken the zucchini spell. Not that there was much talking going on at the moment, with everyone being more occupied with their dinners. No one had objected to Beryl's pizza choice, and even if they had, Beryl wasn't in any position to care.

  
She finished her first slice, and took a long pull at her pop, finishing it. She caught Lavinia's eye, and held up her bottle. Lavinia nodded at her, and held up her index finger for 'just a second.' 

  
Beryl turned back to the table, and tried to decide if she wanted another slice of the meat-lovers, or whether she wanted to try a slice of the pizza the Sideros had gotten, or a helping of salad...

  
Deciding that she was _clearly_ too hungry to make those kinds of decisions, Beryl took another slice of the meat-lover's. As she ate, she glanced up at the television hanging by their table. Just the nightly news from VNN, and they were already past all the new stuff, so it was just playing more of the coverage of the attack on Haven. Some speech from a Menagerie official -

  
\- but Beryl recognized someone standing next to the official. She lowered her pizza slice, and cocked her head, trying to put a name to the face.

  
Taiyang saw the intensity of his gaze, and looked over his shoulder at the screen.

  
Lavinia handed Beryl another bottle. "Anyone else need another drink?"

  
Most of the table did. But Taiyang said, "Lavinia, can you turn up the volume on this?" He gestured at the television.

  
"I guess? It's just the news."

  
Tai shrugged. "My TV's been on the fritz."

  
_Blake. That was the name. Yang's old partner. What is she doing up there on stage with the Menagerie militia leadership? And didn't she have a bow?_

  
Beryl blinked a few times. _Ears. She was using the bow to hide her ears. Gods, no wonder it looked like a weird fashion choice, a bow that didn't tie anything up._

  
"-reaffirm Menagerie's commitment to equal rights and responsibilities for all people. Thank you."

  
The news anchor reappeared, with the shot of the Menagerie official and the intact CCT tower behind him shrinking to a corner of the screen. "That was Chief Belladonna of Menagerie, making another call for unity in these troubled times. Cyril, how are the clean-up operations going?"

  
"Well, Lisa-"

  
Beryl tuned it out. Just another update. They couldn't have made that much progress since yesterday.

  
_Belladonna. Blake Belladonna._

  
Beryl knew that people could have the same last name, but Chief Belladonna and Blake Belladonna, on the same stage, with the similar hair, and facial features... Both Faunus, obviously. Even if the chief didn't have any overt tells.

  
Irida touched her arm. "You okay?"

  
"Um, yeah. Just recognized someone. Friend of a friend."

  
_Beautiful, a good fighter, **and** the daughter of a chief of state?_

  
Beryl sighed internally, trying not to wallow in it. Yang was gone. And she'd asked Beryl to move on too.

  
Taiyang stood up. Suddenly, just sitting to standing, with barely a transition between them. Like he moved during a fight. He said, "I'm sorry, I just realized I have something I need to take of."

  
And Beryl could hear a lot of Yang in those words. Polite, easy, friendly - with her red-eyed Semblance raging underneath. She shifted uncomfortably.

  
Her mother looked up at Taiyang, wide-eyed. "Right now?"

  
"Yes." He put on a smile. "I think I left a door unlocked, and the wild animals are probably rooting through my pantry. Come on, Zwei, let's go show them out."

  
Yang's dog came to his feet, and barked in affirmation.

  
Beryl had some suspicions, and there was only one way to see them out. She waited until everyone else had said their somewhat confused good-byes, and got up.

  
Taiyang gave her a teacher look that very clearly told her to sit back down and wait.

  
But Beryl was only sort of his student, and her curiosity was driving her. "We still need to talk about scheduling. I'll walk with you a bit."

  
He jerked his head, in a very un-Taiyang gesture. Beryl followed him out of _Virgil's Tables_.

  
Before he could say anything, Beryl blurted out, "What's going on?"

  
Tai blew out a long breath. "I didn't know about the attack on Haven."

  
"Oh." Beryl took a long second to go back to how _she'd_ felt when the news report came on. And Taiyang was a trained Huntsman, and he still wasn't able to affect events that were happening in Mistral - it had to be a vicious amount of sudden helplessness. "But it's been all over the - you said your TV was out."

  
"And my scroll's missing. When did this happen? Not when did we get news of it, when did it _happen_?"

  
Beryl tried to flip through the dates in her head, but she'd been recovering for a few of those days, and time had been a little wonky - she pulled out her scroll and checked. "Six days ago, late evening there."

  
Tai's voice had lost his easy-going tone. He barely sounded like himself. "Guess who showed up at my house six days ago."

  
She felt a twinge, remembering pain. Lots of pain. "Raven. But how-"

  
He didn't answer, just plowed ahead. "We didn't get the reports for a few days, right?"

  
Beryl nodded, trying to figure things out, trying to craft theories that made sense.

  
"And, what a surprise, my connections to the outside world went missing or broke before that."

  
Did it really matter? There was a bigger problem right now. "Do- do you need help? I mean, you've got Zwei, and I don't know if I'd really be any help at all, but if you want another-"

  
Tai chopped his hand through the air, cutting her off. "No. I don't want you getting hurt. It may not have felt like it, but that was Raven trying to give you an _instructional_ beating. And it may not come to a fight. I'm going to have a talk with my ex-wife. I'll come to your house tomorrow, and bring the veggies."

  
Beryl swallowed. "What if you don't?"

  
He sighed. "I don't know. She's not - we weren't - I don't know. I need time to think."

  
Zwei barked.

  
"What if you just send Zwei to us? Or -" Beryl dug out her scroll and offered it to Taiyang.

  
"Beryl, I-" Tai took her scroll. "-thanks."

  
"The code's 9264. Just call our house, or the police, or - well, whoever."

  
He blew out a long breath, and it seemed to drain away the raw edge of his emotions. "I'll see you tomorrow."

  
"You'd better. My mom is probably going to make you a book of all her zucchini recipes."

  
Taiyang smiled, and he and Zwei walked off into the dusk.

  
Beryl watched them for a long moment, then went back inside.

  
She crossed paths with Lavinia on the way back to the table.

  
"Is Mr Xiao Long having raccoon trouble again? I thought he and Ruby took care of that."

  
"I guess not." If Lavinia was going to give her an easy out, Beryl was going to take it.

  
At the table, Beryl walked up as Helena waggled her finger at Beryl's mother. "You watch yourself, young lady. He's a heartbreaker."

  
Aliki sighed. "Mother, you say that about all the young men."

  
"I do not. Well, I might. But he's especially bad. Married two of his team mates, had half the class sighing to me while I did their fittings -" Helena shook her head. 

  
Beryl sat down, and her mother looked at her with hopeful eyes. 

  
_...I can't tell her. Not everything. Not right now, when it's just fear that he won't come back._

  
"He's bringing a bunch of veggies over tomorrow." She paused. "If they haven't all been eaten." Just enough to temper her mother's expectations. Hopefully.

  
It seemed to work. Her mother smiled, and Helena asked after her hobbies, and then they were off to art history land -

  
Irida nudged her. "Hey."

  
"Hey."

  
"Were you doing anything tomorrow morning? I've been dying to get some exercise, and running around town isn't cutting it."

  
"Um, sure!" Beryl did have to get used to the weight of Dragon's Tail again. Some running, light chance of Grimm, watching Irida's hair shine in the morning light - "Where did you want to meet?"


End file.
